I just wanted to put up a few videos of things we’ve been doing with Felix.

Those of you who have been swimming with Felix know that he has hated getting his face wet since he was born. (see evidence from bathtime below)

We’ve been working with him on swimming and he’s been learning fast. He started out really scared of going in the water, floating in a tube, etc., and going underwater was about the worst thing in the world. But we worked at it every day for a few weeks and we have tons of fun swimming together now. He loves going fishing (grabbing little fish from the bottom of the pool).

He’s also been loving learning to ride his bike. I modified a normal bike to make it into a balance bike. We’re definitely believers in balance bikes over training wheels. Within a week of being on a balance bike he was already coasting. Here’s a few weeks into it.

I just put the pedals back onto the bike. He has never ridden anything with pedals (he was completely uninterested in the tricycle we bought him) so he’s still getting the hang of pedaling forward and keeping his feet on the pedals. Anyway, this was from his first day riding with pedals.

Hope everybody reading is having a good summer.

BTW, the title of the post comes from Matt (or Alissa) asking, when they heard that we were working on swimming and biking, if we were training him for a triathlon. No, we’re not. But we’re having fun together.

Ummm, this blog died for awhile, but spring is the season of rebirth, so we’ll give this another shot. And we have some very cute pictures to get it going. He was just being particularly cute this day.

The smiliest of them all

We are definitely into toddlerhood, with its fun and not-so-fun. One of the things that is both fun and not-so-fun sometimes is how going limp is a form of nonviolent protest for Felix. Sometimes our family looks like this:

But there are lots of positives. He’s learning lots of new words in both Spanish and English. He sometimes surprises us with words he knows that we haven’t really worked on teaching him. He’s even helpful. He’s learning to put things away and he loves to help us do housework, by handing us the dustpan or putting things in the trash. He’s making lots of friends in the playgroup at church and at daycare. He loves to play at the playground and go on walks.

After three years of looking for a job every winter and spring, I (C) finally accepted a tenure-track position. Since we’ll be here for a while we decided to buy a house. We have finished negotiations and will be closing in a month. This is it:

The title actually refers to Felix’s desire to always go faster or be lifted up higher (so he can touch things like lights and fans).

We have been settling into a new schedule with the start of the fall semester and the job that B started working over the summer. And we found out that GVSU will actually be repeating the job search that was called off last year that turns C’s position into a tenure-track one. So, we’re starting that all over again. Luckily, we’re in Michigan and we love fall here.

Since Felix is the only real news, we’ll just get on to the stuff that matters. A year ago we had our families here for Felix’s blessing. He has changed a lot since then.

Then:

Now:

In some ways, Felix has changed a lot. Here are some things he likes now that he didn’t a year ago:

1. Playing with doors. He will stand at our bedroom door and open and shut it, giggle, open it and shut it again, giggle some more and talk to himself, etc. for a long time.

2. Going on runs in the running stroller. He used to hate being strapped down in the stroller and wasn’t much fun to run with. But now, …

3. Hugging. Felix has entered a new phase that we like a lot. He loves to hug. Hug mom, hug dad, hug teddy bear, hug blankets, he’s a great hugger.
(teddy bear got to be upside-down for this hug)

In many ways, he’s still the same as he was a year ago.

He still loves to look at books and be read to
(by the way, this picture doesn’t come close to doing justice to how cute he looks in his super hero sleeper -C)

He loves to eat

And we still think he’s cutest when he’s asleep.

This sounds cheesy (and you all know our aversion to cheesiness), but being Felix’s parents just keeps getting better and better.

(If you didn’t see the short video of him walking, click on the link in the short post just after this one.)

Over the past couple of weeks a few important things have happened here: 1) spring came to Michigan, and 2) we found out that we will be staying here for at least another year. Number 2 is because I (C) didn’t get the job at the University of New Mexico, which is a bit of a disappointment, but the sting is tempered by Number 1 and what it has reminded us.
A few months ago we were listening to Simon and Garfunkle’s “America” and realized that it talks (sings) about Michigan: “Michigan seems like a dream to me now. It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw…” Spring comes late to Michigan, but when it comes, it’s beautiful. It happened quickly at the beginning of May. Outside our front door there is a shrub that has become home to a family of birds. The first sign we had was a bright blue egg that had fallen out of the nest and onto our front lawn. It was so bright that we mistook it for a candy Easter egg. Then we found the nest and started checking the family’s progress daily. Here is how it went:

One of the best surprises about spring was Lily of the Valley growing in our front yard. The smell in the evening is perfect. Since you can’t smell online, here’s a picture.

Tulips in our yard (which we certainly didn’t plant) burst open in bright colors and they’re everywhere here. And this isn’t even Holland, MI, where they have the tulip festival every year, with 5 million tulips in one small city near the Lake Michigan shore. We drove out to see it, but were deterred by traffic, so we decided to go to the lake shore.
There were no other cars in the parking lot when we pulled in, and we didn’t see the beach, just a mountain of sand in front of us. To get to the beach, we had to climb about seven flights of stairs to get to the top of the dune, and then go down about ten more to get to the beach.

This is a panoramic view from near the top of the stairs.

But it was worth the climb to have the beach all to ourselves on a perfect spring day.

Felix wrestling the driftwood

We already knew that we liked Michigan, but after having seen the possibility of moving somewhere else and not gotten it, this spring has reminded us that Michigan is such a good fit for us (not to mention that it’s May 17th and didn’t get above 60 degrees. Who could ask for more?)

Our last bit of news after years of deliberation, reminders from family members, etc., is that we bought a kitchen table.